Solutions to sin of a broken foster care system

Solutions to sin of a broken foster care system
By U.S. REP. TOM DeLAY

Two things can be said about the report issued recently by Texas
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, "Forgotton Children," about the
state's child welfare system.

First, the picture painted by this report — a stark image of abuse,
neglect, malnutrition and instability — may well be the bleakest ever
painted of our foster care system. Second, it might also be the most
accurate.

The findings of the Strayhorn report (which can be found at
www.window.state.tx.us/forgottenchildren/) are shocking, to be sure,
but to those of us who have worked at the local, state and federal
level to improve the services available to abused and neglected
children, they were not surprising.

That children who are abused and neglected by their families are too
often only further victimized by "the system" that is supposed to
protect them is a matter of chronic, longstanding and unavoidable
reality.

The problems are simple: The system perversely encourages instability
in the lives of abused and neglected children. Despite mountains of
evidence showing that every new move a foster child makes leaves
emotional and psychological scars, the law in Texas and many states
keeps the children moving. If children settle into a home, they are
moved. If their lives improve in foster care, they're moved. If their
lives get worse in foster care, they move.

Meanwhile, their living conditions range from unstable to downright
inhuman. Many of the findings of Strayhorn's report — lack of indoor
plumbing, plastic sheets for walls and an attic "lock-down" room — are
out of a horror movie.

It is not fair. It is cruel and unusual. It is a sin, what our society
is putting these children through.

There is plenty of blame to go around, but these problems must not
merely be identified. At long last, they must be solved.

At the federal level, Congress is moving to improve its role in the
system.

In the House we are drafting a bill to shorten the length of time that
states wait for FBI criminal history checks for prospective foster and
adoptive parents. These children are a priority, and the law must make
them so.

I am also working to help introduce President Bush's initiative to put
more flexibility into the billions of federal dollars that flow to the
states for child welfare. Rather than limiting that money to paying
for room and board in foster care, it should also be spent, as
determined by the state, where it is most needed, on preventative and
rehabilitative services for foster children and biological families.
No amount of money will end neglect and abuse, but improved programs
can limit it.

Toward that end, I have asked the General Accounting Office, the
investigative arm of Congress, to study the ways the federal
government holds states accountable for the treatment of children in
their care.

In a few weeks, I will testify at a House Government Reform Committee
hearing about the lack of coordination of federal programs and funding
streams for child abuse services around the country. At last count,
the federal government had 33 offices, agencies and bureaus dealing
with child maltreatment with about 46 separate funding streams.

And as can be expected, this splintered approach is making the
problems worse, not better. We must centralize these programs and
provide comprehensive and flexible services, not merely piecemeal
programs with competing and rigid categorical boundaries.

States, for their part, must first assume a more child-centered policy
posture. It is America's abused and neglected children who need our
protection, not the systems that have failed to do so for the last
three decades.

States must move beyond the failed ideas that have led us to the
circumstances we see in the Strayhorn report.

One of those ideas is at the heart of the Oaks at Rio Bend, a
residential community my wife, Christine, and I are establishing for
abused and neglected children. Rio Bend, now under construction in
Richmond, will be a permanent community for abused and neglected
children, a stable place for them to live, free from violence, abuse
or the inhuman living conditions detailed in the Strayhorn report.

If a child leaves Rio Bend and returns to his family, only to once
again face abuse and neglect, there will always be a home for him
there, with the same foster family. If a child leaves for specialized
help, he can always return. If a child at Rio Bend turns 18, we won't
throw him out onto the streets. Instead, he will be encouraged to seek
employment or further education and will always have a place to call
home.

The system is broken, and needs to be fixed. Children are dying, and
it is our fault. The time has come for new ideas and new approaches to
protect abused and neglected children in Texas and around the country.
The Strayhorn report, for all its horrifying details, has opened a
door of clarifying opportunity for America's kids. It's up to us, the
grown-ups, to help them walk through it.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...utlook/2519573
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